1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a peeling device and a peeling method, in particular to a peeling device and a peeling method for peeling off a sheet material, such as a protective sheet or the like, stuck on a tabular member such as a semiconductor wafer or the like.
2. Related Art
In a production process of semiconductors, such processes are adopted as: to stick a sheet material such as a protective sheet or the like in order to protect a pattern on a surface of a disc-shaped semiconductor wafer (hereunder referred to as “wafer”), namely a circuit surface, and grind the opposite surface of the circuit into a ultrathin thickness, thereafter perform dicing to the wafer in checkerboard pattern, and resultantly form a plurality of chips; or to apply half-dicing to the circuit face of a wafer beforehand in checkerboard pattern, thereafter stick a protective sheet or the like on the circuit surface, grind the opposite surface of the circuit into a ultrathin thickness, and resultantly form a plurality of chips.
The chips individualized in the state that the chips are fixed on the protective sheet or the like are picked up one by one after the protective sheet has been peeled off and each chip is bonded to a predetermined substrate (bonding) with a bonding apparatus.
As shown in FIG. 18, a peeling process has heretofore been arranged in such a way that, when a sheet material 100 is peeled off from each chip 101, in a state that each chip 101 is adsorbed and retained on the adsorbing face 102A of an adsorber 102, one end of a sheet material 100 is gripped by a peeling means 105 such as a chuck or the like, the peeling means 105 and the adsorbing face 102A are moved relatively to each other, whereby the sheet material 100 is peeled off from the chip 101 gradually from the end of the sheet material 100 toward the other end thereof (refer to Japanese laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-315697).
However, in the event of peeling off such a sheet material 100 as mentioned above, when a chip 101 is thinned and downsized, the chip 101 is prone to bend at the time of the peeling-off and the adsorptivity of an adsorbing face 102A is likely to deteriorate due to air flow from a dicing line or the like, and as a result sometimes chips 101 happen to move upward from the adsorbing face 102A as shown in FIG. 18 and resultantly chips 101 crack or are damaged during the course of the peeling-off. Further, it sometimes happens that chips 101 move improperly on an adsorbing face 102A and adjacent chips 101 overlap with each other.
Such drawbacks cause that the yield ratio lowers due to cracked or damaged chips 101 and, when picking up chips 101 from topside by a bonding apparatus, lower chips 101 overlapped by others cannot be detected with a sensor or the like and the chip 101 cannot be picked up. Moreover, since a large gap between adjacent chips 101 is formed, through which air leakage is caused in the adsorber 102, such an inconvenience is led that the adsorptivity of an adsorbing face 102A further deteriorates and a sheet material 100 cannot be peeled off from the chips 101.